


In the Wink of an Eye

by benmitchells



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Bonding, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benmitchells/pseuds/benmitchells
Summary: Lexi turns to Callum. “Why do you do that?”“Do what?”“Wink like that.”He frowns. “Wink like what?”“Like this,” and then she proceeds to blink both eyes, one eye slightly more screwed up than the other. Callum laughs at her impression of him.“I dunno, I just do.”ORLexi tries to teach Callum how to wink, and Ben isn't exactly happy about it.
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Comments: 9
Kudos: 150





	In the Wink of an Eye

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt from ballumory on tumblr: 'Lexi teaches Callum how to wink properly... and Ben struggles not to sulk about it.. :)'
> 
> i changed it up slightly bc i'm pretty sure if you can't wink then you just can't wink? like idk if winking is smth that can be taught if you can't do it?? like i think some people just straight up CANNOT wink so i kind of went that route with it, but other than that i tried to stick to the prompt as much as i could!!
> 
> FOR REFERENCE !! this is set a year or two in the future, so lexi is a little bit older than she is now and her relationship with callum has developed a lot.
> 
> also i'm really sorry abt the corny title i am TERRIBLE at titles but i just wanted to post this lmao
> 
> and i apologize for any mistakes i might have missed while editing 
> 
> but yeah, that's enough of that lmao enjoy!!!!

“Right, I’m going to have shower.” Ben says, leaning on Callum’s leg as he pushes himself off the couch. He stretches as he stands, shirt lifting up to reveal a couple of inches of stomach – it’s a view Callum always appreciates. “Behave yourselves while I’m gone.”

“We will.” Lexi assures him from the floor, turning just in time to catch Callum winking – or at least trying to wink – at her dad as he walked away.

They both listen to the _thump thump thump_ as Ben ascends the stairs. Then, once he’s gone, Lexi turns to Callum. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Wink like that.”

He frowns. “Wink like what?”

“Like this,” and then she proceeds to blink both eyes, one eye slightly more screwed up than the other. Callum laughs at her impression of him.

“I dunno, I just do.” He shrugs, then picks up the remote to see what else is on now that Ben isn’t around to complain about Callum’s television choices. “I've never been able to wink properly.”

“So why do you?” She’s still looking up at him, curious.

“Because,” he starts, and then immediately falters when he realizes he doesn’t really know what to say, “just because you’re not good at something doesn’t mean you can’t do it anyway.”

She looks at him like she doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t blame her.

“I can wink with both eyes, look,” and she does, winking one eye at Callum and then, with a little bit more effort, the other eye. She does it again, switching eyes each time as if to prove her point.

“Alright, _show-off,_ we can’t all be as talented as you.” He pouts, but it’s good natured. She stops then, smiling proudly. “Come on then, if you’re so good at it. Come and teach me how to do it properly.”

Her smile quickly morphs into a frown. “How am I supposed to teach you?”

“I don’t know; you’re the expert.”

Lexi still doesn’t look convinced, but Callum knows she’s not one to back down from a challenge (she’s very much her father’s daughter in that sense), and surely enough a moment later she’s getting up from the floor to come and sit next to him on the couch. Callum turns his body towards hers and looks at her, awaiting instruction.

“Come on then,” he says after a moment, when she still hasn’t said anything, “teach me how to do it.” She looks at a loss.

“You just do this,” and she winks at him again. Callum tries to wink back. “No, you’re still closing both eyes.”

“I can’t help it!” He laughs. She frowns; Callum can practically see the wheels in her head turning as she tries to figure out how to go about doing this. He tries to wink again just to prove his point.

“What about closing your eyes and then just opening one?” She suggests, so Callum tries it – and he does manage to open one eye, to be fair, but only by scrunching his face to keep the other one shut. “No, not like that-”

“That’s the only way I can do it!” He cries, but tries again anyway. The result is the same, though, so he gives up and opens both of his eyes.

But giving up isn’t an option for Lexi, apparently, because then she’s suggesting that Callum tries to it the opposite way – opening his eyes really wide and then closing one of them. He tries it, even though he knows it won’t work - sure enough, the result is much the same.

“Better?” He asks her, even though he knows it’s not.

“Not really.”

Callum relaxes his face, laughing – partly at himself, and partly at how frustrated Lexi seems by the fact that she’s being defeated his inability to wink. He nudges her slightly. “It’s alright, Lex. I just can’t wink. Some people _can’t_ ; their bodies don’t-”

“No, no, you can do it!” She insists, still not giving up. Her head tilts as she thinks, her face is almost comically serious. Then her eyes suddenly widen. “I know! What if I hold your eye open-”

“Whoa, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” She tries to reach for him anyway, so he lightly grabs her wrist to stop her.

“Why not?”

“Because,” he lets go of her wrist but she goes straight for his face, so he stops her again, “what if your finger slips and pokes me in the eye?” 

She tries again, insistent. “It won’t slip!”

“It might!”

“It won’t, I’ll be careful-”

“Lexi-”

“Just let me-”

“Lexi, _no_.”

She immediately stops when she hears Callum’s tone of voice (Ben has affectionately dubbed it his ‘parent voice’, but Callum isn’t too sure about that). It’s something that he rarely uses because he doesn’t like telling Lexi off, but sometimes it’s necessary when she starts misbehaving and there’s no one else around to stop her. It always works like a charm, too, because it’s so rare to hear Callum use it with her that when he _does_ use it, Lexi instantly knows he’s not messing around and stops whatever she’s doing. She doesn’t like it when Callum uses that voice on her; she doesn’t like it when he’s upset with her. Callum likes it even less.

(It didn’t come easy, though – none of being a step parent did, if he’s perfectly honest, but learning how to properly handle Lexi when she was misbehaving was probably the hardest of all. Because she’s funny and intelligent and creative and Callum adores her, but she’s also headstrong and opinionated and can sometimes get carried away with herself and needs to be told when enough is enough. For a long time Callum had struggled with knowing how to be stern with her, how to tell her off when she needed to be told off. He didn’t think he really had the _right_ to tell her off, was the thing, and he never really needed to, anyway; not if Ben or Lola or Kathy or Jay was about. He would just wait for one of them to tell her off, or tell her no, or tell her to calm down. It wasn’t Callum’s place to do it.

It hadn’t been until Ben had brought it up one day that Callum had realized something needed to change. “She walks all over you, you know that?” He had said, and Callum had just shrugged and said he didn’t mind, which hadn’t been the right answer at all. “I know all of this is new to you, Callum, but you can’t be scared of telling her off if she’s acting up.” Ben had told him, uncharacteristically serious. “If she’s doing something wrong, she needs to be _told_ that she’s doing something wrong. Otherwise she won’t know, will she? And she’ll think it’s alright. And _then_ she’ll end up like me, and none of us want that, do we?”

“I think you’re alright.” Callum had said, and Ben had laughed and the conversation had been over, but Callum had heard him loud and clear.

It had been hard – terrifying at times – but he’d got there in the end. Is still getting there.)

“Sorry.” She mumbles, sitting back in the chair, lowering her eyes. Callum lets go of her wrist; she pulls it back towards her body immediately.

“It’s alright,” he assures her, tapping her chin until she lifts her head again. “I think me learning to wink is a bit of a lost cause, don’t you?” She nods, but her eyes are still fixed on her lap. Callum tries not to feel guilty about it. “I bet I can do something you can’t do though.”

Lexi’s eyes finally lift at that, intrigued. Callum smiles at her.

When Ben comes back downstairs – glasses on, hair wet from the shower – he walks into the living room to find his daughter and his boyfriend sat on the couch, silently pulling funny faces at each other. It’s the silence that’s probably the most disconcerting part of it all. It’s so bizarre that it actually stops Ben in his tracks.

“Your faces will stay like that if the wind changes.” The two of them jump at the sound of his voice – they hadn’t even noticed Ben come back down. “ _What_ are you two doing?”

“Callum can make his ears move!” Lexi exclaims, like it’s the best news she’s ever heard. It doesn’t clarify the situation any.

“What?”

“Did you know she can touch her tongue to her nose?” Callum asks, looking at Ben over the top of Lexi’s head, eyes bright. That doesn’t help to clarify the situation either. “Go on, show him.”

And she does; it takes a little bit of strain and a lot of concentration, but she manages to just barely touch the tip her tongue to the end her nose. Ben can’t help but let out a disbelieving laugh.

“So this is how you’ve been entertaining yourselves while I’ve been gone, is it?” He asks, moving to sit on the chair seeing as though Lexi has stolen his spot on the sofa. “Figuring out what weird things your body can do?”

“Lexi was trying to teach me how to wink and-”

“What? _No_.”

The words are out of Ben’s mouth embarrassingly fast, quiet and whiny and embarrassingly petulant. He presses his mouth closed immediately, looks away from the confused look Callum gives him.

“No?”

Ben bites his lip, trying to think of a way to backtrack. He comes up with nothing. “Yeah, I mean... _no_. As in no, you can’t wink. We all know that, Callum.” He forces a laugh.

It’s a poor recovery, and Ben knows from the look on his face Callum sees right through him.

Lexi doesn’t though, because she says, “That’s why I was trying to teach him.” The ‘duh’ is unspoken, but heavily implied.

“We gave up, though.” Callum tells him. There’s something very deliberate about the way he says it. “Lexi tried her best, but I think it’s just something my body can’t do.”

Ben is not relieved. He swears he’s not.

“Can I go and play upstairs?” Lexi asks, apparently having enough of this whole thing now. She’s giving him the big, pleading eyes too. Ben nods his head towards the stairs.

“As long as you’re quiet, it’s getting late.” She’s off like a shot. “And don’t be getting out a load of toys, either; you’re going to bed soon!”

It’s Ben and Callum, then, who listen to her _thump thump thump_ up the stairs. Her footfalls are a lot lighter than her father’s.

When Ben looks back at Callum and sees the smirk on his face, he realizes he may have made a mistake by allowing himself to be left alone with him.

“ _No_?” Callum repeats, moving across the room so he can perch on the arm of the chair, a smile already on his face. Ben tries to get up but Callum traps him with his legs. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Ben shrugs, trying to act oblivious - he knows it's a long shot, but he tries anyway. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Callum takes Ben’s face and lifts it, forcing him to look at him. “Like why you started to panic when you thought Lexi had taught me to wink?”

Ben makes a point to meet Callum’s eye. To act like he’s not embarrassed, even though he can feel his face heating up. “I just don’t think you need to fix what ain’t broken, that’s all.”

“Right. Except my winking _is_ broken.”

“Yeah, but it’s you, ain’t it? It’s your _thing_ ,” Ben confesses, no longer looking Callum in the eye – he’s staring at his chin instead, “constantly winking even though you can’t.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Are you saying I can’t wink?”

Callum tries really hard to pretend to be offended, but he struggles to keep the smile off his face; can’t at all when Ben shoves at him, now visibly embarrassed. He catches Ben’s wrists and doesn’t let go, much like he had with Lexi’s; presses a kiss to the palm of each hand.

“You used to take the piss out of me for my winking.”

“I take the piss out of you for lots of things, it’s how I show affection.” Ben informs him, staring at his wrists for a moment, still in Callum’s hold. Then he looks up at his face. “Are you gonna let go of me?” Callum scrunches his face up in contemplation.

“Might. Might not.” The sound of Ben’s laughter sends tingles down Callum’s spine.

“Right, well, I’m not gonna lie and pretend I’m not into this, but I’m also not having sex with you in the living room while my daughter is upstairs-”

“God, it’s always about sex with you, ain’t it?”

“You’re holding both my wrists and won’t let go, Callum! How else am I supposed to take that?”

“Just-” and Callum has to cut himself off to try and tamp down his grin, “just say you think I’m cute and I’ll let go.”

Ben screws his nose up. “I think I prefer things as they are, actually.”

“ _Ben_ -”

“You know I think you’re cute.” He says quietly, face softening. “I tell you that all the time, don’t I? With your dimples and your ears-”

“-and my shitty winking.”

“ _Yes_ , Callum, alright, I admit it; I think your shitty winking is cute, alright? And I would’ve missed it if Lexi had taught you how to wink properly.” He looks up at Callum, expectant, but the way Callum is looking at him almost makes him lose his train of thought. Quietly, he asks, “Good enough?”

“Suppose.” Callum teases, and after a moment he lets go of Ben’s wrists with a laugh.

Ben wastes no time to reach up and pull Callum down for a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed it!! as always kudos and comments are very appreciated!!
> 
> come and talk to me on tumblr @sunsetsover !!
> 
> also, expect to see more of me over the next few days, i have a few more prompts to fill that i'll be posting :-)
> 
> <3


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